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After reading this PG classic http://paulgraham.com/distraction.html http://paulgraham.com/distraction.html, I have a machine only for work. (Which, ironically,
by may 16y ago
After reading this PG classic http://paulgraham.com/distraction.html http://paulgraham.com/distraction.html, I have a machine only for work. (Which, ironically, I'm posting from right now, heh.)
I only connect via Ethernet, and often physically disconnect my laptop from the net, so when I feel the urge to get on Twitter, HN, etc. I have to reach for the cable again, which is enough of a red flag to get me back to work.
I've managed to keep myself from "needing" to be connected. My business partner is great about never bugging me when I'm coding, we use status.net to do asynchronous communication (think a private Twitter), Google Wave to collaborate, and phones for anything urgent and plenty of meatspace every week, of course.
When I'm coding, I have offline copies of all the web pages and documentation I need, so I can't use that as an excuse to get online.
I also use Firefox browser profiles extensively, one for Personal stuff, one for Work, one for <Projectname> etc. Between that and Firefox sessions, I can leave a bunch of shit open, but come back to it when I have time.
For a while I was a night person and just hit Twitter/HN/reddit once or twice a day, kind of got a digest in the "morning" (6 pm) and then worked all night, w/o too much happening on the Internet. (Yes, I'm an American, yes, I know about the rest of the world, but the point is that less happens at night and so you don't feel like you're missing something. Now that I'm a day person for the first time in years, I feel the urge to keep up every hour.)
I also have started exercising about half an hour a day (just a walk around the neighborhood) and limiting my online time to mainly using Twitter as a newsfeed, HN as a feed of interesting stuff and that's about it. I don't have time to keep up with world events too much anymore, sadly. No New York Times or NPR.org for me, though I usually read our little local newspaper in about 10 minutes each day.